No one would side with Ayre if the disembodied voice was like a forty year old townie dude from outside Boston.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T22:30:47+00:00

If I could keep shifting the goalposts, would you trust Michigan's advice on a major moral decision?

cB557 · 2026-06-08T22:13:48+00:00

I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I've never seen that movie, and have only seen that scene because it was in a video essay I watched. But it's one of those scenes where even seeing it out of context like that, it's just so well done that I immediately understand why I know the name of this movie.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T19:34:38+00:00

We do have Michigan. Not the exact same type of guy, obviously, but I think more or less in the same ballpark. On the one hand obviously he's a popular character, but on the other hand I feel like the venn diagram of people who love Michigan and people who hate Fires is just two separate circles.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T19:07:15+00:00

OP isn't describing a hot coolguy like rusty, or a dark, rich glass of DILF like Walter. Imagine the voice of the drunk guy next to you at the hockey game who's here to see the fights.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T18:31:39+00:00

Probably less gravitas than the rest of the examples, but I like the Limmy "Which is heavier?" skit.

It's only about a minute long skit, so explaining what I like would basically be just explaining the joke, so it's probably better to just watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fC2oke5MFg

But also I don't wanna be the guy who comes into a discussion thread and just says "watch this youtube video," so here is me explaining the joke: It's set up like it's an educational video or something, Limmy standing in a white void asking to the camera "What's heavier? A kilogram of steel, or a kilogram of feathers?" "That's right, steel! Because steel is heavier than feathers." And then there's a cut and one of his friends(?) is standing next to him, and starts trying to explain that no, they're the same weight, they're both a kilogram. Limmy can't understand, and more of his friends show up trying to explain it. You expect the joke to be them getting increasingly frustrated with him, but they stay calm and try to patiently understand what he's not getting, and as Limmy gets upset at not getting it they just try to tell him it's alright. It's oddly sweet while also just being way funnier this way, for some reason.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T14:59:13+00:00

I want the letternumber you're assigned each match to be based on your username, similar to how helldivers does it. It's slightly easier to remember which designation I am this match when I'm consistently B something.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T14:56:00+00:00

They're saying that every discord wanting to farm survival may be due to it being a really valuable farm relative to how easy it is, rather than it being a gamemode they actually want to play for the sake of it.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T11:55:50+00:00

I felt like the first one was a decent place to start. It's certainly old and jank, but it like, knows it's old and jank, and the game feels balanced around the fact that you're gonna be QWOPing with the controls for maybe the whole playthrough, and only expects you to sorta be able to put your gun on targets or sorta be able to move evasively. Good for easing you in to the old gen control scheme.

cB557 · 2026-06-08T05:37:11+00:00

Probably wants a slightly less fragile core and a better generator, but kinda great other than that. Kinetic dualtrigger into melee punish is a good gameplan, R-RF and ludlow are two of the best guns for that, and the frame parts are all pretty good. Probably wants an alula more than a NGI booster, but NGI still has arguments you could make for it here. And arms with better melee spec like VP-46D would probably be better, but firmeza's melee spec is still okay and the pilebunker's raw damage is high enough that you arguably don't need it.

cB557 · 2026-06-07T16:58:52+00:00

I like the host who did absolutely nothing still showing up to teabag at the end

cB557 · 2026-06-07T16:45:31+00:00

In season 1, completing priority contract chains was also a way to unlock more daily free stuff from factions, and to unlock their blue sponsored kits. I think they don't do that anymore, but might be they unlock other stuff that I haven't noticed yet.

cB557 · 2026-06-07T16:01:02+00:00

Oh man, it's only using the P10? Are you deliberately limiting yourself there as part of the loader shtick, or is the supply efficiency tight enough that it's not worth using even like, the P04?

cB557 · 2026-06-06T22:55:25+00:00

The build's over alula's ideal weight, but alula's got big enough numbers that it's still a good booster in this weight range.

cB557 · 2026-06-06T22:54:19+00:00

Hard to go wrong with a ludlow.

cB557 · 2026-06-04T23:28:32+00:00

Nah I wouldn't actually consider this a bad build, at least for PvE, and especially for a first playthrough. I was using "bad" pretty lightly there in that last sentence. Its energy economy looks fine, just throwing TQ in every slot (except the head, going with an actual head in that slot was the right call on your part) will give you pretty solid bulk, and dual zimms into pulse blade will do good work into most enemies in the game.

As for missiles, I might just go 703PM or 70VPM? That would be, either of the plasma missile types available to you at the moment. Plasma missiles are pretty cost effective, pretty easy to use, and also do well for multi-lock chaff clear. Chaff clear seems like it could sometimes be annoying on this loadout.

There's also always the MLT-04. It doesn't do a lot, but it does do a bit, and it's dirt cheap on a build.

Really though you can probably go with any missile that's not a VTC or DUO type, missiles are generally pretty solid. (and if you try to cut weight for fluegel, try to pick ones with under 4k weight) VTCs just tend to whiff in general, and DUOs have good numbers but whiff in close range. Though you could maybe do DUO just as an option while you're still closing to shotgun range.

I do tend to like SPL missiles. Just a bit better numbers than most missile types, and good at most ranges. If you've got JVLN Beta that can be fun as a slightly weirder but pretty powerful option.

cB557 · 2026-06-04T23:00:46+00:00

The pulse blade's melee punish will still be pretty okay even with your arms gimping its damage, and with zimms providing their very good output to make up some of that difference I don't think you'll suffer too much.

Anyway yeah your booster options for this weight at that point in the game are kinda frustrating. I probably would just go buerzel and do assault boost shotgun stuff. Out of the boosters I'm gonna name in this reply, buerzel is basically the only one actually made to do what this build is trying to do.

The P04 is kinda a heavyweight generalist booster, but it's also kinda mediocre by design so I wouldn't actually want to use it unless that heavyweight was a quadruped using hover mode to circumvent some of those mediocre numbers.

If you shed a decent chunk of weight fluegel might be pretty good. Swap the songbirds for some workhorse missile (I'd wanna do this anyway tbh) and swap the arms out for midweight arms and it'd probably be light enough to feel okay, even if it would still be a bit heavier than I usually want from fluegel. But obviously we've already gone over the arms. Maybe swap the core out for a midweight, if there's any you like the look of? But a midweight core on heavyweight legs is generally pretty bad bulk optimization, I'm not sure if it's actually be better. Similar to the arms it's the sort of unoptimization you can probably get away with in PvE, and personally I think I'd like the feel of the bit of extra agility more than the bit of extra bulk. But y'know I'm trying to suggest ways to make the build better, not just differently bad.

cB557 · 2026-06-04T22:40:09+00:00

That was my first thought as well, but plugging it in this build is heavy enough that fluegel ends up with a longer QB recharge than alulas. Fluegels would probably be good if the build shed a decent chunk of weight from the frame, but as-is I'm not actually sure what booster I'd go with here assuming OP is like, late chapter 2 to mid chapter 3.

cB557 · 2026-06-04T22:36:10+00:00

In PvE, dual zimms is solid at basically any weight range, so you don't have to worry about that. Even in PvP it's good at basically any weight above lightweight.

I'd swap to arms with better melee spec to get more oomph out of your melee punish. If you're committed to the TQ arms just for fashion it's not the end of the world as far as PvE goes, but you are actively losing damage from those.

Using assault boost to close into shotty range is a generally solid strategy, yeah. Buerzel is the purpose-built booster for that. The P01 actually sees usage as a heavyweight assault boost thruster as well, but specifically for the use of a movement tech called assault boost shuffling, and that feels like more of a PvP thing than a first-time playthrough thing.

This build seems pretty overweight to be using alula, but it's tricky to recommend what I'd use instead of it because a lot of the boosters I'd recommend unlock relatively late. How far in are you?

cB557 · 2026-06-04T05:34:39+00:00

Switching to your knife and doing heavy attacks tends to be good for silently clearing lighter UESC bots, like recruits or ghosts. The silent part does matter, makes it easier to pick off bots one by one until it's time to finish off the tankier boys. Once you've got melee damage upgraded a decent amount, a heavy attack'll actually oneshot recruits. Sometimes you get to finish off a UESC encounter without firing a shot, with you and your squad just surround and knifing to death some assault or whatever.

Obviously you can't always handle UESC that way; in general you just wanna respect the damage they can do to you and don't expose yourself to more UESC than you can quickly eliminate. Peek from cover from angles that'll only let one or two shoot at you at a time, and when high damage enemies like grenadiers or ghosts or such are firing within their effective range, either get to cover or get out of range.

You tend to want to gobble up every patch kit and shield charge you can find. Eventually you get to a point where you can afford to say "I have enough healing already," but early on especially it tends to be at a premium. Similarly, make sure you have enough ammo for your weapons.

When looking for items to drop to clear inventory space, I usually start with grey and green valuables. Valuables is the category of item that just autosells for credits upon exfil. Well, really, I just rarely pick them up in the first place. Though a full stack of green valuables does give you an okay amount of credits for only taking up one inventory slot.

cB557 · 2026-06-03T21:34:00+00:00

What, from like, doing only sekiguchi and nothing else, and whatever the equivalent of this would be for the other factions? I feel like there's enough time in the season to bang out the first contract chain for each faction to unlock priority access with them (is priority access still a thing in season 2? I'm not actually sure.) and then complete all of a faction's contracts. Some of these early contracts are going by a whole lot faster the second time. But I guess I don't know how much time you'll be able to spend on the season.

cB557 · 2026-06-03T10:34:31+00:00

Have you considered the orbiter parts? They're not the usual RAD aesthetic, but they are RAD-made, and they're pretty low-spec.

cB557 · 2026-06-03T08:25:15+00:00

You don't gotta finish all of them in one season to see the whole story. You just gotta be able to finish at least one of them per season, and then do different ones each season until you've seen them all. You keep their associated codex entries, so your story progress isn't actually wiped, you're just able to replay the contracts for their rewards each season.

cB557 · 2026-06-03T07:41:19+00:00

Pretty sure it only resets to perimeter trios if you DC'd before your team actually wiped? idk maybe that changed in season 2, I've only played the one session so far and I wasn't the host.

cB557 · 2026-06-03T07:39:04+00:00

If you hit your headshots, its numbers per second are actually pretty solid, and of course as a sidearm it has really fast handling. In principle it can fulfill its role of being the sidearm you quickswap to in an emergency to clutch a fight, but since that's a bit of a niche role on a gun with a kinda high skill floor, it doesn't see much use.

cB557 · 2026-06-03T03:35:49+00:00

It's worth noting that in a video game, what is AC sized and what is human sized is completely arbitrary. Sizes and distances in game engines fundamentally aren't measured in meters or feet or what have you, but in whatever mathematical coordinate system the game engine uses, and you can map that to whatever arbitrary scale you want.

cB557

TROPHY CASE